In this way, defilement reemerges as the ultimate common denominator of all three episodes of Cleanness and the precise nature of the uncleanness that the Maker hates with a fiery zeal whose extent, as the poem reiterates, no human mind could ever fathom.

1-10)--or who has been influenced by the emphasis on cleanness and uncleanness in the Mosaic holiness code and its equivalent in Islam--would no doubt judge a scene "profane" in which a blind woman urinates publicly, a leper drags himself along the street by the stumps that remain of his hands, a madman in a ragged loincloth sets a local dog to barking, and "cows donkeys dogs camels elephants" mingle indiscriminately with "marriage processions drummers tourists lepers and bathing devotees" (5).

If I'm in the pit working, at the first blast of the Trumpet my tools will drop out of my hands and I shall be taken up right through the earth from the very spot; as white as a lily, with all uncleanness washed away.

Cranmer's chaplain, Thomas Becon, is thought to be the author of the eleventh homily, "Against Whoredom and Uncleanness," while Cranmer's inclusiveness is reflected in the fact that he invited a later opponent, Bishop Edmund Bonner, and his chaplain, John Harpsfield, to contribute "Of Christian Love and Charity" and "Of the Misery of all Mankind," respectively.

Social anthropologist Mary Douglas (1966) notes that the criterion of uncleanness or dirt has historically been used to classify people as advanced or primitive, a practice that presumably would relegate those deemed "dirty" to undesirable social spaces.

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